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Que Sera Sera (Whatever Will Be Will Be) & Survival of the Piss-Ants

The girl next door beauty, Doris Day, made Que Sera Sera[2] (Whatever Will Be Will Be) famous. Pink Martini, Holly Cole, Corinne Bailey Rae, Motherfunkersband, and others went on with their versions, but Sly and The Family Stone is my favored rendition (play the youlube link[3]).

Sly has his issues but he and The Stone knew how to sell dat funky psychedelic soul, baby. They were from San Francisco (natch the late 60s), although Sly grew up in Vallejo, California, a town on the SF North Bay specific to my nautical Macomber family who built and launched backyard boats thereabouts, plus my mother ran for Miss Mare Island.

During WWII (1939 to 1945+), mom worked as a shop steward/gofer in Shop 02. The first half of the job usually regulated to a man. At a luscious tender age, she helped direct 400 people (Rosie the riveters[4]) as part of the necessary building and repairing of the American Pacific Fleet. By the end of this war Mare Island Naval Shipyard had produced 17 submarines, four submarine tenders, 31 destroyer escorts, 33 small craft and more than 300 landing craft. All hale the Navy and collective guilt to get 12 million girls working in the WWII sweatshops of the military industrial complex.

In 1968, my poetic gorgeous petite smart as a whip mother laid down on railroad tracks in Oakland, with me, and 4,000 other women and kids, holding hands, to say enough mayhem (this war that time – the Vietnam War). She was a MAW – mother against war – because she saw up-close the power of war machinery, the horror of men sent to die, and the afflicted soul-damage in those lucky enough to make it back home. Que sera sera?

Mare Island originally settled as a government installation in 1850, deactivated in 1995/96. The Napa River (I grew up in Napa Valley) flows between the island and the city of Vallejo. The island is actually a peninsula, up river from the Carquinez Straights and San Pablo Bay and essential to the upper marine habitat of the San Francisco Bay.

The conversion and reuse of Mare Island resulted in 3,075 acres (12.44 km2) of protected tidal and non-tidal wetlands providing wintering habitat for thousands of shorebirds and waterfowl. During migrating season, thousands of people flock to attend the three-day San Francisco Bay Flyway Festival[5] in February on Mare Island. The event includes birding, art shows, exhibitors, and music, marking the annual miraculous return of a million or more shorebirds, ducks, geese, and hawks to the North Bay Area.

Que Sera Sera is not a viable option if impending action is compulsory, and if one’s brain engages and one’s compassion is clear-headed. Any birder, backyard duck watcher, or surfer dude who sees not merely looks can testify to what is happening on Earth. Ending the continuum of mocus hocus by putting thicker sharper lead in your pencil and doing right action is not for the faint of heart. The deed takes breaking overwhelming chunks into doable pieces and carrying the load in infantile to engineered steps up the mountain. Analogous to building pyramids at Giza.

If whatever will be will be was the only thought of the day regarding Mare Island millions of wild birds and an entire integrated natural habitat necessary for marine health and human wellbeing is forever forsaken.

Listing successes of not buying into que sera sera would embrace me deciding to get sober and clean on the ides of March in 1985. I am a nobody on the radar. Every single revolutionary artist, thinker, pivotal doer, shaman naturalist, Egyptian poet, Hamptons fisherman/attorney, native healer, providence of scientific discovery, flying bird spirit, sobering buddies, and girl next door make a positive difference. They act-out the power of change belying inventiveness is intuitive based. An inner voice, if not a mollified trickster, speaks the imaginative way out of any quagmire. Tune in, don’t drop out, and turn on to love and life as one world.

The mammoth concern currently on the table for mitigation is global warming with rising seas as it affects the San Francisco Bay system, waterfront human settlements, and beyond. Here is a map of projected flooding:

(A disclaimer for you cynics: “This map is not a carefully surveyed and extremely accurate presentation. It is intended to provide a visual impression of which geographic areas might be flooded if global warming and climate change continue unabated.”)

As you can readily see on the map for Vallejo, Mare Island, and the North Bay these areas are no longer wetlands or human communities. They become additions to the Greater San Francisco Bay.

Global rising seas will inundate coastal areas around the planet so take a projected glance at the flooding maps for Florida, New York, Washington, The Nile River, Netherlands, and Venice by clicking their headers on the same link.

Que sera sera? If the blind continue to feather their 1% nests at the current rate of rude and rich Earth takes revenge, big, bigger, and biggest. Owning Greek Islands, hiding out in Brazil as a midnight Internet rider, investing in a seriously upscale mega-resort in Egypt on the Med, or being the mayor of Petaluma, California thinking que sera sera means you universally instill a global guarantee. A lack of action (deciding not to decide is a decision) portends whatever will be will become a disastrous state of affairs so beyond puny human ability to transform it affects the totality of humanity. We, meaning you, me, and every iota of what we daily experience, gets our wholistic come upin’s. The flipside of being one is becoming surviving leftovers paddling around in Waterworld[6], Neither a harmonious sight nor yogi blessed.

The future is ours to see, if we lower our defensive or insatiable shields of self-made fear and the disease of more, and take a hard-on gander at what is possible. If our species, individually and collectively, keep playing que sera sera the third rock from the sun will finish our wimp ass story for us. Using our brains, our struggling sense of self/species-value, our expansive love of wondrous life we can narcissistically erect personal arks or we can stop with the nonsense of geo-political boundaries. Working together vis-à-vis to solve the immediate planetary crisis demands we stop passing the buck, the yen, or the EGP[7] to repressive governments, corporate assholes, the banksters, and so-called worldwide NGOs. Action takes a slice from the Occupy Movement, or maybe it is the Occupy Movement[8].

I am hip I write in bulky mouthfuls of wordage, please keep reading or take a break – brew a pot tea or add ice to your secreted drinkie – your choice. Choking on the truth is life affirming over dying at 4 AM from a heart attack, any day of the week on any continent. Cough, sputter, puff on another Marlboro, or reach out for the life preserver floating in front of you. To see it, to grab a hold of it, you gotta wave away the spoiled hazy smoke one exhales.

Freewill is an unconditional gift bestowed the moment we take our initial inhaled breath outside the womb. Not news, eh? Whatever form of higher power you subscribe to, or not, your mystical or mythical entity is not going to get us out of the complicated box canyons we invent to contaminate. Earth killing caca is what we put in motion every single time we fire up the SUV, build another mega something or another, swig down the next gulp of Vodka, puff on a cancer stick[9], or sit on the aft deck of a yacht. We are on our own regarding our self-inflections (there is support, this is support). Yea, it is a colossal test. In my not so humble estimation, neither instigated not inferred by God. Doubtless, we are our own worse enemy, but the damage done is not limited to our individual bullshit. Is this beginning to detonate your denial?

Growing a backyard organic garden is handy. Putting up one-site solar is groovy. Operating an international fact-finding institute about bird populations is right-on. Creating Nilo Dreams® to inspire others is needed. But, we require a helluva lot more to thwart the extinction of species, including saving ourselves.

We are responsible, fellow magnificent human. We are the exclusive living force on Earth who continues to drastically mess with our one world nest. Today, we are twittering on the edge of a no-comeback for Homo sapiens.

The Internet is a life preserver. It is the ultimate global tool of freedom to stay connected to offer truth, awareness, art, beauty, and love while storming the citadel of prejudice manufactured by mind colonizing bastards who think they own our private hearts.

What I know is simple yet for any intellectual it is dripping saccharine, yet here goes – love is the answer. Love of self, love of life, love of Earth, love of family and friends, love of the one other, and if not love of change, then for friggin’s sakes at a bare minimum the emotional realization – nothing changes if nothing changes. Tough love is its own reward because no one you direct it at wants it, ever. This is how to recognize it in the tule fog.

Doris’s 1956 sweetie of a tune worked to mend the madness of WWII, to infuse fear of atomic warfare, and keep folks down in the ghetto burning down their hood and not Beverly Hills. It is today outdated beyond any perceived implantation.

These are the irrevocable days for ramping up justice, freedom, and equality.

Before our communal ticket to ride on the mothership is punched into oblivion, how can we change our nasty Earth murdering ways for the personal and greater good?

You tell me, muse.

Rafting together, Power to the People,

B. E. Macomber

Que Sera Sera Lyrics

When I was just a little girl

I asked my mother what will I be

Will I be pretty

Will I be rich

Here’s what she said to me

Que sera sera

Whatever will be will be

The future’s not ours to see

Que sera sera

When I was just a child in school

I asked my teacher what should I try

Should I paint pictures

Should I sing songs

This was her wise reply

Que sera sera

Whatever will be will be

The future’s not ours to see

Que sera sera

When I grew up and fell in love

I asked my sweetheart what lies ahead

Will there be rainbows day after day

Here’s what my sweetheart said

Que sera sera

Whatever will be will be

The future’s not ours to see

Que sera sera

What will be, will be

Que sera sera…

[1] Attitude determines harmony. A pissant, also seen as piss-ant has its origin from the word pismire, a 14th-century term for ant. The term piss-ant can also be used as an adjective, usually as a pejorative, to mean insignificant and annoying. In conversations with his advisors during the Vietnam War, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson referred to Vietnam as “a piddling piss-ant little country”.

[2] “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)” first published in 1956, is a popular song written by the Jay Livingston and Ray Evans songwriting team. The song was introduced in the Alfred Hitchcock film, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), starring Doris Day and James Stewart in the lead roles.

Day’s recording made it to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one in UK Singles Chart. From 1968 to 1973, it was the theme song for the situation comedy The Doris Day Show becoming her signature tune. The song received the 1956 Academy Award for Best Original Song. It was the third Oscar in this category for Livingston and Evans, who previously won in 1948 and 1950. It was a #1 hit in Australia for pop singer Rowe in September 1965. See the lyrics at the end of my rant.

[9] Cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, including 43 known cancer-causing (carcinogenic) compounds and 400 other toxins. These cigarette ingredients include nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide, as well as formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, arsenic, and DDT. Puff on a cig and within six minutes, your brain receives the crap. Nicotine in small doses acts as a stimulant to the brain. In large doses, it is a depressant, inhibiting the flow of signals between nerve cells. In even larger doses, it is a lethal poison, affecting the heart, blood vessels, and hormones. Nicotine in the bloodstream acts to make the smoker feel calm.

As a cigarette is smoked, the amount of tar inhaled into the lungs increases, and the last puff contains more than twice as much tar as the first puff. Carbon monoxide makes it harder for red blood cells to carry oxygen throughout the body. Tar is a mixture of substances that together form a sticky mass in the lungs.